Florida State Road 959


State Road 959, known locally as West 57th Avenue and Red Road, is a north-south Florida state highway located in south Miami-Dade County west of Downtown Miami. It runs from U.S. 1 at the south end at the South Miami-Coral Gables border to Perimeter Road, just south of the runway of the Miami International Airport at its north end.

Route description

State Road 959 begins at the intersection with Red Road and US 1, with SR 959 heading north, going through the southwestern end of the University of Miami campus, and then through residential areas, as it acts as the dividing line between Coral Gables to its east and South Miami and patches of unincorporated Miami-Dade County to the west between US 1 and SR 976. North of Bird Road, Red Road continues through the residential sections of Coral Gables, and enters the residential areas of West Miami, crossing US 41. SR 959 then enters Miami, intersecting SR 968. North of NW 5th Street, Red Road becomes more commercial as it approaches the airport area, with a major shopping center and hotel at the intersection with NW 7th Street. Following that, SR 959 then crosses a canal and has an interchange with the Dolphin Expressway, with the road terminating just north of the interchange at an dead end intersection with North 12th Street/Perimeter Road, just south of the Miami International Airport runway.

History

This section of Red Road received its FDOT of SR 959 designation in 1980. Its original configuration was longer as it stretched southward to the intersection of Red Road and Southwest 111th Street, where it met the eastern end of SR 990 just outside the parking lot of the original Parrot Jungle, a major tourist attraction. Between 1995 and 2001, FDOT truncated several State Roads in Miami-Dade County, and both SR 959 and SR 990 were cut back to terminate at US 1.

Major intersections